


The Road Back Home

by KatieComma



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 911, 9x11, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Catherine is the worst in this episode, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Episode Remix, Fix-It, Gen, Grace hugs fix everything, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Injury and Violence, This is what should have happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/pseuds/KatieComma
Summary: Episode 9x11 was broken - I fixed it.Cause MY Danny Williams never would have let that happen...There's no actual McDanno in this... because that's not really the point of this fic... but it can totally be McDanno if you want.





	The Road Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> The dialogue at the beginning is all per the show... and then I diverged where I thought it would have diverged...
> 
> Let's be honest... if I'm TOTALLY honest with myself... Danny wouldn't have waited OVER a month to go find Steve... so that's where it REALLY would have diverged... but instead I decided to fix this the way it was started... so here we are...

Danny was nervous, unsure exactly what he was going to find as he steered the rental car over uneven dirt road. 

It was cold in Montana, and he’d worn his leather jacket, prepared for winter outside of paradise.

The suspension of the little Honda creaked as he followed the overgrown driveway. He definitely missed the Camaro, but the little rental was all the small town could offer. 

Seeing movement near a tree by the house, his patience running thin after a long day of travelling, Danny pulled off the dirt and drove across the wide swath of grass instead of taking the long way around.

Steve was standing outside at a water trough, looking like Grizzly Adams, a large overgrown, untamed beard swallowing his face. He was taut, and high strung, his body a nervous bowstring as Danny watched him pull his gun and crouch behind the trough.

Danny got out of the car, slammed the door, and casually walked over to Steve, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket. 

He was afraid of what was going on in the SEAL’s head. It had been too long. Steve had been away for too long. Danny cursed himself for not listening to his gut and coming to find the idiot earlier. But Steve kept saying he was going to get on the next flight. Day after day, week after week, he promised: tomorrow. Danny knew they’d been empty promises and he should have called Steve on it.

Steve stood up, like it took all the effort in the world, and holstered his gun. “Hey,” he said hollowly to the cool afternoon as Danny approached. The word sounded empty, his voice hoarse.

“Hay is, uh, for horses,” Danny replied with a bad joke, hoping to stir a small smile, or at the very least some banter. He didn’t succeed. Not even a pretended smile. Danny’s heart ached. Why had he waited so long? 

Steve looked down at Danny’s feet and continued. “You didn’t need to come out here.” His voice was so raw and broken that Danny wondered if he’d come to find his friend, his brother, at all. Finally Steve’s eyes travelled up to meet Danny’s.

“Oh, no. No, I did, you see, because that’s what family does,” Danny meant every word. He tried to smile, but he could feel that it was a grimace. There was no place for smiling, no place for happiness in the grief Steve had built around himself.

“That’s some real wisdom, Danny,” Steve said bitterly. Danny grimaced a little, and cursed himself again for waiting. Family would have come sooner, they could both hear that hanging in the air between them. Family would have come immediately.

“Well I got that from you, you know?” Danny said. “When my brother died, you wouldn’t leave me alone.” That was true. Flight home together. Days spent mourning and angry and sad and a mess. Steve hadn’t left for a moment. And where had Danny been when Joe died? Back in Hawaii. Surrounded by friends and family while Steve was alone on Joe’s ranch. Waiting, dying a little inside each day. Danny could see it in his face, his eyes were hollow and empty. Blank, emotionless eyes. “Big pain in the ass,” he tacked on the end with a shrug, another opening for more banter, more of their familiar arguing.

“I’m glad to see you,” Steve looked away as he said it, but there was still a hint of genuine feeling there. It was true. He stepped forward and pulled Danny into a wooden hug. There was no long hold, no real embrace, just a back slap and then Steve was stepping away again, eyes on the horizon.

“So, what do you say?” Danny said, getting right to the heart of it as they pulled apart. “It’s been over a month. Ready to come home now or what?”

The door of the house opened, and Danny glanced over to see Catherine walk out onto the porch and lean casually against a post.

“Aha,” Danny said to himself. So Steve had asked Catherine to come, or maybe she hadn’t been stupid like Danny and had come without being asked. Danny cursed himself again. But at least Steve had someone with him, though from his attitude, Danny wasn’t sure how much good she’d done him.

“Hey,” Catherine called out across the yard.

Steve picked up the bucket he’d filled without addressing Danny’s reaction to Catherine.

“I didn’t, ah, you know... I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Danny said as he followed Steve back toward the house.

Catherine didn’t smile either, her face solemn. “What exactly did you think you were interrupting?” She asked, watching Steve carefully as he walked right past her without a glance in her direction.

Danny thought it was obvious. But Steve was not really himself. “I don’t know,” Danny said, put off by Catherine’s tense attitude toward Steve. And the fact that Steve seemed to be on another planet. “The, uh, grieving process?” Danny ventured.

“That’s not what this is,” Steve snapped, continuing to walk along the porch of the house, bucket in hand.

Danny followed to a shed at the side of the house, where Steve pulled open the creaky door to reveal a man tied to a chair. A man who barely resembled a man anymore. He was beat to a pulp, and someone had gone at him with weapons, carving up flesh and making him bleed. The fresh Montana air was overwhelmed with the smell of coppery blood.

“Well, I liked it better when I thought you two were playing house,” Danny tried to joke, but it caught in his throat and came out disgusted. Not that he’d been much happier to think that Steve had taken solace in Catherine. They were bad for each other. On both counts. Steve hadn’t treated her so hot, and she’d walked away from him after promising to stay. They were a dumpster fire that just wouldn’t burn out. “Who’s that?” Danny asked, indicating the guy.

Steve was ignoring him. He’d walked to the back of the shed where a table held a battery, with cables hooked up, and a small table of tools that were covered in blood. Steve was using the water he’d brought to clean the sticky red from the bright shiny metal.

So Catherine answered instead. “This is Gregers Thomsen,” she said, leaning in the doorway, and he could hear the edge in her voice. She didn’t like this either. So why hadn’t she called Danny? “He’s Omar Hassan’s lawyer.”

“Huh. If you say so,” Danny didn’t care. Couldn’t find it in himself to care at all. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t Steve. He was grieving and hurting and wanting to make other people hurt. And Catherine had let him do it. Let him suffer and pull someone else into his suffering. Why hadn’t she called him? Danny was so angry he wanted to put his fist through the wall. But Steve was angry enough for everyone in the state of Montana, and it wouldn’t help, so Danny pushed that instinct down into his gut and left it there. Once he’d swallowed that anger he tried to summon their familiar joking banter again, squinting his eyes dramatically at the guy. “I mean, it looks to me like his mother couldn’t recognize him.” Maybe he could pull Steve back to reality.

Steve ignored Danny and plowed on ahead. “It was Greer who gave up the name of the SEALs on the mission that killed Hassan’s father in ’02.” Steve’s voice barely tripped up when he spoke Greer’s name, but Danny caught it. Steve glanced at Danny for only a moment, his eyes cast away again in a second. “But it was Gregers here who executed Hassan’s plan. Isn’t that right, Gregers?” Steve was speaking to the lump of flesh that could have, maybe been a man. And maybe would be again one day. He loomed over the bound figure.

Catherine interrupted to clarify, not that it was unclear. “He hired the hitters who murdered the team.” Then more quietly, she added: “including Joe.”

Danny’s mouth was open in shock. He was silent, speechless, unsure exactly what to say or how to stop what was happening. He wasn't shocked about this man, or his role in the plot. He couldn't see past Steve and what he was withering into.

Steve spoke at the “prisoner,” but addressed his words to Danny. “You’re just in time, Danny. Gregers was just about to tell us Hassan’s location. Isn’t that right?” Steve planted a hand firmly on the the guy’s shoulder and leaned heavily on him.

Gregers spat blood out defiantly.

Danny sighed, and tried not to breath back in too deeply for the smell of blood and shit in the small space. “Yeah. Doesn’t… Doesn’t seem to me like he’s gonna talk.”

“That’s ok. I’m not done with him yet,” Steve said, the sadistic pleasure leaking out in his voice as he looked up and finally met Danny’s eye for a significant amount of time. There it was: Nothing. Steve was emptied out. If he was still in there at all he was buried down deep under grief and anger.

Danny looked down at the floor and wondered just how many times Joe had used this room for similar purposes. There were stains on the floor that were older than this interrogation. It made Danny wonder about Joe. Joe, who’d never had someone to pull him back and say “stop, enough.” Joe, who’d always done things alone. Was that why Steve hadn’t called? He knew that Danny wouldn’t be on board with torture, maybe even murder? But Catherine was? Cat was complicit? Did they look at Danny through their military lenses and think his mercy a weakness?

Steve pulled a large knife from his back pocket. “Catherine,” he croaked, nodding in her direction. No cute nicknames here. Because he was playing crazy Navy SEAL, not Steve McGarrett.

Catherine stepped forward to close the door on Steve, which would leave her and Danny outside. Steve stepped around, his back to them, to tower over Gregers.

Danny couldn’t do it anymore. He stepped forward and grabbed Steve’s t-shirt. The way he’d done a million times before. He tugged at the material, and at first Steve didn’t even move a muscle. A tower of tensed-up hurt and anger and pain.

Danny could feel the fear coming off Catherine in waves. She was genuinely afraid of Steve.

Danny wasn’t afraid. He grabbed at Steve’s t-shirt again and tugged it harder.

“Come on Steve,” Danny urged. “Come on you big oaf, let’s get some fresh air.”

“Danny-” Catherine’s voice was soft, but the glare he sent her way stopped the words in her throat.

Steve still hadn’t moved. Danny got closer and put his hands on Steve’s tensed up biceps, gripping tightly.

“Come on Steve,” Danny put on his SEAL-herding tone.

Steve hung his head a little, looking at the knife in his hand.

Danny tightened his grip and pulled Steve backward. The SEAL moved a reluctant step away from his prisoner.

“Steve,” Danny said softly. “This isn’t the way.”

Steve took a few more steps backward toward clean, fresh air.

“Not like this,” Danny said softly. “Come on.”

Another few steps and they were free of the room. Danny turned them expertly toward a bench at the edge of the porch and slowly walked Steve over to it. Danny took the knife gently from Steve’s hand, and handed it off to Catherine without even looking at her.

Steve fell onto the bench like he hadn’t sat down and let the weight off his shoulders in over a month. He sagged forward, and put his head into his hands.

Danny quickly looked at Catherine, all business. “Close that door. Get the first aid kit and do what you can. Call your people, or whoever, to come pick him up and get him out of here,” Danny whispered instruction, motioning toward the prisoner.

Catherine nodded, her face sober, but kept her mouth shut.

Danny wanted to beg and scream and cry at her: why didn’t she call him? Why did she let Steve lose himself in this? What had she been thinking? He tried to convey it all in a look before he looked away from her in disgust.

Danny changed his expression to kindness and sympathy and knelt in front of Steve, looking up to see his face.

Steve was crumbling: jaw tensed, eyes raining tears onto the dusty porch, eyebrows screwed up in pain. Instead of feeling anything, Steve had been making someone else hurt.

“It’s ok Steve,” Danny said softly, putting his hands to Steve’s neck. “We’re gonna go home now.”

“Danny-“ Steve’s sobs choked off whatever he’d planned to say as he fell forward onto his knees on the porch.

“I got you,” Danny said softly, pulling Steve into a hug. Danny started shushing the SEAL and patting his head the way he’d done to Grace when she was young; It felt so natural, and yet so strange at the same time. There was something universal about those sounds and motions together.

Steve gripped tightly to Danny’s t-shirt, and the ripping sound that followed indicated that Steve’s fingers had torn through a seam somewhere in his grief.

Danny started to rock a little, back and forth, hoping to lull Steve into a safe place.

Why had Danny waited so damn long? What had he been thinking? He wanted to be strong, but knowing that he’d let Steve suffer so long when he could have helped shook a few tears from Danny’s eyes, and he gripped Steve that much tighter.

 

 

 

The flight had been long, despite being non-commercial, and Danny was ready to have his feet back on home-turf: Hawaii.

The private airfield was empty, except for one car waiting for them when they disembarked: The Camaro. Danny sent Steve out ahead, and as soon as the SEAL’s feet hit pavement the doors of the car opened.

Grace was bolting toward them as fast as her skinny little track and field championship legs would carry her.

Danny watched Steve’s body shudder at the sight, and he scooped Grace up into his arms as soon as she reached him, dropping his bags to the ground. Steve cradled her head and swung her in a circle.

“Uncle Steve!” Grace squealed, gripping him tight. “I missed you!”

Steve’s response was muffled by Grace’s hair, and Steve’s low voice.

It should have frightened Danny. This man who, less than a day before, had been soaked in another man’s blood and stood over him with a knife ready to slice and carve to get answers. But Danny wasn’t afraid. Steve loved Grace like his own daughter, and Grace would sooth the wounds that he carried deep down. The ones even Danny couldn’t reach.

Danny looked back toward the Camaro, unsure who would have gotten the keys and brought the car down. His heart leapt into his throat, and he skirted his daughter and best friend to run and pull Kono into a hug. He wondered if she was a dream, if he was imagining her, until he felt flesh, solid and real, in his arms.

“Hey,” Kono said softly into Danny’s ear. “Good to see you too.” There was emotion in her voice, but she didn’t cry.

Danny did. He’d felt like he was alone. No one was left. Chin and Kono gone, Steve broken. Danny thought he was coming home to shoulder all the burdens alone. But here was Kono, come to take some of the weight.

“Babe,” Danny sobbed out, “I am so glad to see you.”

“Me too,” she said softly.

Danny refused to let Kono go, a hand around her waist even when they parted from their hug. They leaned against the hood of the Camaro waiting, while Steve twirled Grace around in circles and the life returned to his face. That goofy smile that Danny hadn’t seen since he’d left to help Grace tour colleges on the mainland, was back in full force. The world was slowly returning to normal. They’d get Joe’s killer. But they’d do it the right way. The way that kept Steve in tact and whole, the way Danny needed him to be.


End file.
